a report on preliminary results 16 august 2011 presentation to abcd-library chris jeris, bobbi fox

Library Application Collaboration, Development Tools and Resources

A Report on Preliminary Results

16 August 2011Presentation to abcd-library

Chris Jeris, Bobbi Fox

Chris Jeris, Bobbi Fox Presentation to abcd-library

Preliminary, adj. :

Preceding and leading up to the main subject or business; introductory; preparatory.

[Emphasis ours]

(Cite: Oxford English Dictionary, Third edition, March 2007; online version June 2011. <http://www.oed.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/view/Entry/150211>; accessed 15 August 2011. An entry for this word was first included in New English Dictionary, 1907.)

16 August 2011


Our Goals

To determine how we can more effectively improve internal collaboration by: Assessing needs Recommending tools Recommending processes Facilitating communication

16 August 2011


What are we trying to answer?

Connecting and collaborating How can we improve internal collaboration?

Specialized support services Are there services/software applications that

could be useful if centralized? Ongoing support and technology transfer

What happens once the application is released?

16 August 2011


What we’ve done so far…

abcd-library: from virtual back to real-life At the meetings, conducted guided discussions

Met with 5 relevant Library groups (total of 17 people)

Met with Jim Waldo, new University CTO

16 August 2011


Connecting & Collaborating

[Asked at June abcd-library meeting]

"How many of you feel like you would like to know more about what everyone else is doing?"

[everyone raises hands]

16 August 2011



“Until now we’ve had a culture, or policy, of isolation. Software developers weren’t supposed to talk to anyone else. Remove the barriers that have been set up.”

Recommendation: let's try providing some kind of people-locator/skill-locator/question-service thing, and see whether it flies.

Culture change!

16 August 2011



“We don’t know what people are working on and don’t know what we can reasonably ask for”.

Recommendation: The default answer to questions of the form "can I

spend an hour talking to X about Y?" should be yes.

Culture change!

16 August 2011



“It’s a struggle to get the right people at the table for requirements.”

This is about management culture here in general, not specific to collaboration on library IT projects - but it comes up over and over

Culture change!

16 August 2011


Specialized Support Services

Quality Assurance Support Almost nobody has it Almost everybody wants it! Most groups, in effect, train their customer

users to do their QA Recommendation:

Hire at least a local expert, if not actually a group you can get time slices from

16 August 2011



Usability Expertise Universal recognition that usability is a good

thing to do (yay!) Many groups have learned as they can Even those groups that incorporate usability

principles would like extra help Recommendation:

Formalize -- somewhat -- the informal network of expertise and resources available to those "in the know"

16 August 2011



Source Control and Bug Tracking Smaller groups would like centralized support Larger groups want to keep their own This is another area where technologists have

an education opportunity JIRA was a big win for some HCL projects

Recommendation: Find some simple, inexpensive platform

(GitHub?) and default to it

16 August 2011


Ongoing Support / Technology Transfer

Not really on anyone’s radar screen yet. -- other than a general, “yeah we need some!”

Distinguish what we would need for ongoing support from what we must have to start

Metaphor: "environmental impact statement"

16 August 2011


Other Things We Learned

People don’t know where to turn …to get information, generally

“Where do we go if something doesn’t fit neatly into a FootPrints category?”

…to know when something’s in the pipeline“How are we supposed [to do future planning] when

there’s no communication from HUL/OIS?” …generally, to be heard

16 August 2011


Other Things We Learned

A significant number of librarians feel disenfranchised by the application development process:“[talking about new HOLLIS features] We want a place to bring issues, questions, and concerns… we want to know about the feature before it’s released.”

“[talking about Course iSites] there isn’t a good mechanism to communicate what we see [in order to get it changed]”

16 August 2011


Project focus has changed

Original focus was on the concerns of software development

Some softdev-specific problems are relatively easy (and posterior)

The fundamental problems involve both developer side and customer side

We need to talk to the librarians who conceive and use apps, not just to devs

16 August 2011


What now?

Meet with more groups

Run a Drupal site up the flagpole

Write a final report with recommendations

16 August 2011


Finally

Goodbye, everyone!

16 August 2011

Chris’s Swan Song


Thank you

NOW: What would you like to add?

16 August 2011

a report on preliminary results 16 august 2011 presentation to abcd-library chris jeris, bobbi fox

Documents